Friday, March 12, 2010

They "disappeared" Thomas Jefferson

Well the crazy fundies on the Texas Board of Education officially rewrote history for their social studies cirriculum. As I noted yesterday, the religious zealots on the board wanted to Christianize the public school textbooks in order to "counter liberal bias" in the schools. One Hispanic board member -- whose own suggestions for including more historic Hispanic references were shot down -- said, “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

These fundies are clearly insane. "They made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution." Disbelief in the church/state divide seems to be the latest pet hobby horse for these American Taliban. Hence the reason they cut Jefferson out of the textbooks for using the phrase. An amendment from one of the sane board members suggesting students "study the reasons 'the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others'" was shot down.

In the internet age, this may not be as disastrous nationally as it might have been in the past since reality-based school systems can either refuse to buy these books and use on-line resources, or the textbook companies could issue different editions. But if I was a parent with a kid in the Texas school system, I'd be suing these maniacs for mandating stupidity in the classroom.

5 Comments:

What bothers me even more than the crazies who want history rewritten, are the "historians" and publishers who are willing to actually do it. "Customizing" history to stroke the biases of a particular locale is pretty disturbing.

The only problem with that is that there are plenty of conservative organizations more than willing to provide their own kinds of textbooks to their allies on the Boards. The Creationist crowd has all sorts of published textbooks they sell to homeschoolers already so that little junior fanatics don't have to have their fragile little minds twisted by Darwinism. No doubt there are more than a few conservative publishers just salivating at the chance to provide these books as well. Truth certainly doesn't matter, and as has been seen a few times, even profit can take a back seat to the importance of getting their propaganda distributed.

I find it deeply disturbing that there's a whole generation within a significant demo who are being raised in ignorance. The social studies revisions are annoying, but I'm more concerned about the anti-science creationism being demanded for science textbooks.

I keep telling myself these people are just loud though, and not a majority. Besides the pendulum always swings back in the other direction eventually. Hope it's in time to save our educational system.

Even if we could, and I doubt whether we can, that would leave millions with a false education who will then grow up and demand that their views and "values" be imparted to another generation. The swinging pendulum has no inherent damping factor and can in fact swing farther every time until the whole damned country gets ripped apart again. This time let 'em secede!

Fake history, fake science, a government allegedly by the "masses" which conceals a government by a few; incestuous government/corporate relationships, official state scapegoats and hate targets, a state religion and one war after another to justify tyranny; an amalgam of the worst attributes of the worst states of history and they're selling it as "freedom."